This is the official blog of ex-Sgt Ellie Bloggs. I was a real live police constable then sergeant for twelve years, on the real live front line of England. I'm now a real live non-police person. All the facts I recount are true, and are not secrets. If they don't want me blogging about it, they shouldn't do it. PS If you don't pay tax, you don't (or didn't) pay my salary.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

The Way Forward.

I would like to propose a new approach to replace "problem-oriented" policing, "neighbourhood" policing and other such buzzwords. These approaches rely on the police identifying local issues and targeting them. This is problematic for two reasons:

1. Quite often the police are the local issue.2. An issue is an issue because the police have been unable to target it.

Another problem with the way we currently police is that when a member of public makes an allegation, police officers sometimes attempt to find out whether or not an offence has actually taken place before they investigate it. This leads to the situation where members of public find that the person they have accused is not immediately arrested. This is an unacceptably poor service.

I therefore propose a new method of policing: "Chinese Whisper" Policing.

Step One: A member of public forms a suspicion.Step Two: This is the clever bit - instead of telling the police, they tell other members of public.Step Three: The other members of public are shocked that the police have taken no action.Step Four: The police come to hear of the suspicion either via the press, or by further members of public who tell them how shocked the other members of public were at the member of public's suspicion not being acted on.Step Five: The police make arrests.

The advantage of this system is that it bypasses the need for the police to check whether any offence has actually taken place. This is because by the time Step Four happens, the original suspicion has undergone the "Chinese Whisper" effect and is now so serious that the police cannot possibly take the risk of inaction.

This system has been implemented successfully by several forces, most notably in Forest Gate, but also on a daily basis countrywide where it has been in use for some years unofficially. The government has demonstrated repeatedly how Chinese Whisper Policing can be applied to foreign affairs, saving millions of pounds avoiding lengthy investigations when with public support they can jump straight to action.

Isn't it time police authorities woke up to this cost-effective and efficient method of policing our streets?

For anonymous who is an American and doesn't understand British humour, the main difference is that British humour is often self-deprecating whilst American humour has everyone else except them as the patsy (fool, victim, etc). That is, until they elected the idiot son of the inconsequential father and started calling the French "cheeseeating surrender monkeys" because they had the gall to differ with the idiot son's point of view (that is, when he could remember what his point of view was). The humour is that if it wasn't for the "cheese eating surrender monkeys" Anonymous would still be singing 'God Save The Queen' every morning instead of what it is he/she does sing - probably something with 'ho's' and 'bitches' in. The self deprecating bit is now that we have a Prime Minister who is so adept at licking the arse of the idiot son, who is laughing at who?Now, does that explain the difference in humour?